As one of the many people eagerly anticipating the release of Gray Matter, the chance to spend some time recently in the recording studio with design legend Jane Jensen, Lorelei King (voice director) and Phillipa Alexander (voice of Samantha Everett) was an exciting prospect. The opportunity not only offered the chance to learn more about the game, but also to see what goes on behind the scenes, witnessing some of the dialogue for the game being recorded first-hand.

The day started at 11am, in a coffee shop near the recording studio where I met with Claas Wolter, the PR Manager from dtp (publisher for Gray Matter) and Ingmar Boeke, a colleague from our fellow adventure site Adventure-Treff. We got to know each other as we woke up a little bit (Claas and Ingmar had flown over from Germany; I had slept on the train up to London). After a bit of discussion about our favourite adventure games, Claas got out his laptop, we cleared the table and got down to business. Part of what I saw was a presentation that will be shown again at a large press conference in a few weeks, which will include some previously unannounced details (my lips are sealed on those bits until then). But I did get plenty of information I can talk about freely, as well as see some new screenshots and some behind-the-scenes video of the motion capture used for the game.

The demonstration started with a recap, basically what is known already. Gray Matter is about young Samantha Everett, an American street magician travelling across Europe. Needing a place to spend the night, she stops at the house of Dr David Styles, who she learns is looking for an assistant. Styles is a neurobiologist conducting experiments on physical actions that can be achieved just by using the human mind, but Sam doesn’t know this and soon becomes involved by recruiting students for him to conduct tests on. The doctor’s experiments are tame at first but soon become more outlandish, and strange things start happening around Oxford. Dr Styles starts having visions of his wife, who tragically died in his troubled past, and it is soon revealed that each of his recruited subjects has a unique psychological characteristic of their own.

At the start of each level, Sam will have a series of challenges she has to complete, which can be done in any order before the section is finished. One of the early challenges will be Sam trying to recruit the five students for Style’s experiments, but the game won’t just focus on her, as Styles is also a playable character. The storytelling looks to be classic Jane Jensen, mixing facts with sci-fi in a dark and original way. Better yet, at the risk of looking too far ahead, if all goes well, Gray Matter will be just the first in a new series by Jensen, though no further details were disclosed as to what any sequels might include.

Next we were shown a series of screenshots in nearly finished form, giving a clear picture of what the game will look like, and all I have to say is “wow”. The new screens look amazing, and there were lots of them to see. Claas also demonstrated the difference between the original screenshots from the previous development team, Tonuzaba, and the new studio, Wizarbox. The difference is stunning, as not only are the graphics (especially the character depictions), much more lifelike with more atmospheric lighting, they also have a much more genuine English feel to them. As Claas put it, “the furniture doesn’t look like it’s from eastern European communist countries anymore.” And it’s definitely true. There were screens of Styles’ Oxford house, a local street and the gates of the university. There was also one very impressive panoramic shot of a large wood-panelled hall which was breathtaking. I’m finely attuned to games trying to depict a British location but getting it wrong, as they often do, but this game feels right, not simply sticking in a red phone box and saying “oh look, it’s British now.” We even got a peek at one of the puzzles, which involved digging for something in a flowerbed, but of course the slideshow presentation stopped before the soil-covered object was revealed.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see anything playable, though we were informed that the logic foundation of the game is done, but some objects and of course the voice track (the reason we were all there in the first place) are still missing. Instead, Claas showed us some footage of an actor in a motion capture suit, reaching for things and performing other gestures that were indiscernible on their own, but provide an interesting glimpse into the attention to detail being given to even the finer character animations.